As yet, the product is months away from any sort of release. But, I’m already thinking about the experience of the initial customers.

It’d be best if the early buyers provide feedback about their experiences. This can be fed back into the design cycle, hopefully improving the product.

To encourage this, companies typically find beta users for their products. More than plain consumers, these are more engaged with the product and the designer, observing behaviour and performance, and providing the resulting feedback to the designer.

I don’t know at what stage I’ll be ready to seek such customers, but it should be sometime this autumn.